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Columbia Holds Wake For Historic Cyclotron
Pickens writes "They called it leviathan, behemoth, Big Bertha. At 12 feet wide, rising 7 feet above the cement floor and weighing an estimated 65 tons, the Columbia cyclotron, the particle accelerator built in the late 1930s by Columbia physicist John Dunning, played a crucial role in the dawn of the nuclear era. Dunning's experiments verified fission, established many of its properties, and, most significantly, demonstrated that the rare isotope Uranium 235, and not the more common U-238, was the more fissionable form of the element. 'In a week or two, they will dismantle it, and they will sell it for scrap,' says George Hamawy, Columbia University's director of radiation safety. 'This is the last chance to see it,' Hamawy added as students held a wake and contractors arrived to remove the cyclotron. 'We're going to make two-thousand-pound sections,' said one contractor before taking the cyclotron's measurements. 'We'll start slicing on Monday.'"
A piece of history has never been so heavy.
Don't take my posts literally; it's just code to control my botnet.
Mod parent down; he's unapropriate (think of the Godwin laws!), completly fails to nail that pathetic pun he might have been aiming for ("owning a piece of history..." would have definitly been better), is unfunny, and most of all he STOLE MY FIRST POST!
Don't take my posts literally; it's just code to control my botnet.
1 - Dismantled cyclotron.
2 - Catapult.
3 - Orbital assembly robot.
4 - More catapult.
5 - ???
6 - Profit!!!
Proving once more that if your problem can't be solved by extensive use of catapults, it probably doesn't deserve being solved at all.
The story is tagged as "hardhack" I suppose that's right, as in "hacked to pieces"
Still seems an inappropriate use of the tag...
Sheldon
Magnet, eh?
Note to self: leave hard drive at home.
Wow! That must be some wicked concrete if it's rusting away.
(Posting anonymously due to having moderated this thread)
That's not a cyclotron. That's a cyclotron.</dundee>